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What is the easiest and quickest way to try Linux Mint

As the title says, what is the easiest and quickest way to view/try Mint and make the move if I like it.

Reasons:

My eleven year old PC MoBo went belly up a month ago. So I decided it was time to move onward and upward. I built a new PC (online) and now I'm awaiting delivery. In the meantime I needed to be able to connect to the Net, for emails etc. A friend was chucking out an extremely old Gateway PC, the max ram it can take is 512mb. It's megga slow, still, I thought that would do for the interim.

I installed WinXP from my other PC's disk, knowing I would have 30 days before it would need to be 'Activated'! I thought that would give plenty of time for the new PC to arrive. At the time the PC builders said it would take 14 working days. However. I hadn't taken into consideration two, four day weekends.

Now my back is against the wall, with NO new PC on the horizon. I have 5 days left to activate WinXP!

Do you think that when I click to activate it, they will think well, it isn't the same machine, but he hasn't upgraded, he's downgraded? We'll let him activate?

Anyway, my solution, till the other PC arrives is to give Linux Mint a try.

Well guys, after my last post and before seeing RGB76, woodchip and/or DippyGirl's suggestions. I downloaded the aforementioned 'Linux mint Gnome', i burnt it to a CD-R. When I put the CD in it offered me two choices...

It said (paraphrasing) one choice was a full install another was to install it along side Windows, like any programme. So I chose to install it on an external HDD. When it finished installing it said I should reboot. I did this, expecting it to boot back into WinXP. But no, it offered me another choice, did i want to boot into WinXP or Linux Mint?

I wasn't aware that I could boot from my external HDD? Anyway, I chose Linux mint. However, instead of booting into Mint it said...

I assumed it was waiting for me to type something at the command prompt. Being as I had absolutely no idea what I was supposed to add, I chose to restart the PC. When ~ this time ~ it asked me which it should boot into, i chose WinXP. Whereupon it booted normally.

I looked in the HDD where I'd installed Mint and opened the file. In here there are five items...

Ok, well it might be to do with a file I didn't install before burning to disk. Which is 'md5sum'. I've now downloaded it and hit another hurdle. Apparently it doesn't install itself, you have to place it in the correct folder for your OS? Of which, these are the two they offer...

Windows 95/98/Me: Download md5sum.exe to c:\windows\command

Windows NT/2000: Download md5sum.exe to your c:\winnt\system32

I, on the other hand have WinXP? So, I plumped for placing it in 'c:\winnt\system32' os at least, my systems version of that, which is... 'c:\windows\system32' a sort of combination of the two.

It then goes on to say the following...

"Open an MS-DOS window and go to the directory of the show you want to check. When you are in that directory, type:

md5sum -c [filename].md5

You must insert the name of the .md5 file [without the brackets]."

I imagine they mean...

'Start'

'Run'

Type cmd press enter.

At least, this is what I did.

However, where do I get the name of the 'md5 file' from? Do they mean...'C:\WINDOWS\system32\md5sum'?

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